


The professor

by Phantomato



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-War, Severus Snape is deceased
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29448786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomato/pseuds/Phantomato
Summary: Marcus Flint was never the best or the brightest of the Slytherins. In the wake of the war, though, he’s a part of what’s left. He’ll mourn Professor Snape if no one else can; the professor deserves that much.
Relationships: Marcus Flint/Oliver Wood
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55





	The professor

The ceremony is nice, Marcus thinks. It’s Ron Weasley who gives the speech on behalf of the Golden Trio, a name that still makes his stomach turn, and something about the youngest Weasley boy makes it easy to hear the words he’s saying. Harry Potter is too much a fucking messiah to really listen to, and he’s proven to be a shit public speaker anyway. Hermione Granger is too fucking smart and still needs everybody to know it—she’s probably owed that, Marcus thinks, as a witch and a Muggleborn, but it still makes for a bad speech.

Weasley talks about loss and you hear it in his inflection. You hear how he misses Fred, how the weight of family loyalty dragged his whole family into a war that was really just a continuation of an earlier war that was built on centuries of wars and conflicts and prejudices all in a row, and somehow it speaks to everyone’s experience, every kid and young adult in the magical world whose side was chosen for them in this most recent conflict by virtue of their birth. And Marcus feels that deeply—feels how much it took to just avoid being made a soldier for a madman and his cult, feels the guilt of not having done more and the resentment of the people who think it would have been so fucking easy for him, and he knows that a year isn’t enough, a lifetime isn’t enough time to deal with the shit they’ve all been through.

But they’ve gotta try, he knows, at least pretend like they’re not falling to pieces, and that’s why he goes with Oliver. 

It’s a public event, really, supposedly anyone can attend. The anniversary memorial’s at Hogwarts so any former student could get there easily enough. The floo at the Broomsticks must’ve been green for a day solid. 

He also knows that there aren’t many Slytherins from the past few decades who would feel welcome.

Like Pansy, only his second cousin but they were raised more like firsts, who is in America after letting fear and desperation rule her in the weakest moment of her life. She’s in exile. Legally, she’s clear, but good fucking luck persuading anyone in wizarding Britain to talk to the woman—the fucking _teenage girl_ , really—that was willing to sell out Harry Potter to stay alive. They should all have been willing to die, apparently.

Oliver argues against this perspective. He and Marcus have gotten into fights about it more than once in the past few years, as the war built into a frenzy and then just… ended, leaving everyone to piece their lives back together in the aftermath. It helps that the pro leagues have started practices again in the past spring, and the full season resumes in the fall, so he and Ollie have outlets for their anger other than screaming at each other.

He just doesn’t fucking understand. He’s so—so _good_ , so righteous, so Gryffindor in all things. Of course he came back to fight, and had been working with a resistance group of their school peers organized by the Weasley twins and their risky radio project for at least a year before the final battle. And it’s not like Marcus didn’t… didn’t _do stuff_ , he did, he helped with supplies and money and there was that time before he and Oliver lived together that he left the keys to his flat under the mat and camped at Ollie’s place for a few weeks, no questions asked about the missing linens and medical supplies when he went back home.

Their world is too bloody small to not have done stuff.

It wasn’t what Oliver had done, though; almost none of the Slytherins could claim that. Some of the existing students, maybe—he’d heard about the Nott boy healing in the Great Hall, or poor Sarah Montague, Graham’s younger sister, who took a curse meant for a first-year. Perhaps the ones still alive will be there. Perhaps not, given how many of their friends and family were among the Death Eaters. 

Nott looks exactly like his father, after all.

Marcus, though, he goes because Oliver goes, and after a year of fucking misery following two years of fucking hell, Oliver’s about the only thing he has left. So he’ll let the crowd stare at him, let their former classmates whisper about the snake in their midst, because Ollie says he wants Marcus there and so Marcus will fucking _be there_. It’s not as though he has much pride left.

So he hears Ron Weasley’s speech and he stands stoically in the background while that redheaded family embraces Oliver, especially Percy and George. He knows they don’t understand how a nice boy like Ollie can stand by a man like him, but he also knows that Oliver needs this space to connect with them and he pretends like it doesn’t hurt to see Percy _fucking_ Weasley judging him for the choices he did or didn’t make during the war.

Draws the fucking line, though, at leaving without saying goodbye to Professor Snape.

Potter stops by the lonely grave before the ceremony, Marcus sees. It’s set apart from the main memorial, like Dumbledore’s tomb, in what’s supposed to be a show of respect for his role, but really feels like a too-fucking-convenient way to keep the name Severus Snape far away from anything overtly virtuous. A few of the surviving professors, including that old Gryffindor bat, spare a few minutes for the professor right after the crowd first disperses, like they know it’s their duty to show he’s approachable. They leave quickly, though. Fucking Slughorn, that shit excuse for a Slytherin, is the first to head off. Marcus has never had him for a class, never really known anything about him except what older relatives have said about their school years, but he thinks the man is the worst of their house if his only instinct is self-preservation.

Slytherins, the best of them, are loyal and proud of it. Marcus doesn’t think he’s the best of them, but he’s here because of Oliver, so he’s trying to be.

After Ollie greets all of his friends, exchanging hugs and tears and sadness and joy while Marcus does his best to not look too intimidating, the crowd has died down quite a bit. Oliver’s ready to leave, he knows. He’s tired and overwrought and leaning into Marcus more than he usually likes to in public—and Marcus still wrestles with what that means for them, if Oliver is ashamed of him—but Marcus steers them over to that lonely plinth supporting a pillar of black stone—

Because _bloody hell_ , Merlin forbid anyone celebrate a miserable Slytherin’s life with fucking _color_ —

And then it’s just them and Professor Snape.

“Marcus?” Oliver asks, not sure why they’re standing here. He knows whose name is on the stone, whose body lies in the ground, and he knows the man was working for the Order, he does, but he doesn’t fucking _get it_ , not when he thinks of Snape the way Marcus thinks of McGonagall.

Except McGonagall has people. When she dies, she’ll have people. She’ll be headmistress during peacetime and generations of students won’t be afraid to talk about how she was kind when their familiar died or helped them through youthful homesickness or whatever nostalgic _bullshit_ they want. Not like tainted Professor Snape, whose time as a head of house meant _just_ as fucking much to his Slytherins, maybe more even, because who the hell else was going to look out for them?

“Wanted to visit the professor,” he responds gruffly, gripping Oliver’s hand a little too tightly like his boyfriend might actually run away rather than be seen standing here.

Oliver doesn’t even try to move. Marcus doesn’t give him enough credit, he knows; they’re working on that, extending grace to each other. It’s an ongoing effort.

“He was fucking level, you know?” Marcus says. He’s supposed to talk, he thinks; that’s what people do at graves. He doesn’t have much practice with the skill, but there’s an awful lot of graves in his life, now, and he really needs to learn.

“No,” Oliver admits. “I don’t know.” He doesn’t ask for Marcus to say more, but he does squeeze Marcus’ hand, and that’s enough. 

So Marcus talks more. “Well, he was. You’d go to the professor with your fucking arm cut off and he’d just ask if you still had the arm before getting you to Madam Pomfrey. Like, he’d tear apart whatever stupid thing you’d done to get your fucking arm cut off when you were back together, but when he left you, you’d understand why it was stupid and how not to do it again.”

“Did the arm thing really happen?” Oliver asks, turning his soft brown eyes up to Marcus. “You make it sound like it happened.”

“Not my story, really, but yeah. Bole and Bletchley were fucking dumbarses and tried transfiguring a bludger in their first year on the team.” He’s smiling, because it was funny and terrifying and he still remembers feeling like he was going to lose his spot as captain when he had to carry Bletchley, and Bole had to carry the arm, off the pitch. 

But then he remembers that one of them is dead and the other is—well, he’s not in Britain, might never be again, ‘cause no one really knows what he did, had to do, during the war.

Bletchley wasn’t at the castle, last May. He had family with the Death Eaters and that’s enough to get him brought into the Ministry for questioning if he ever shows face, though, and if he has a mark—even a mark taken under duress is a mark. 

Marcus blinks. Clears his head, clears his throat. He ignores the way Oliver is staring at him a little too closely, and turns his face back to the plinth and the pillar in front of them.

“I ever tell you about Terence in first year?” he asks Oliver, conspicuously moving on.

“Nah,” Oliver says, looking forward again and leaning against Marcus. His shoulder is warm and strong and Marcus raises his arm and grips Oliver’s waist like a lifeline.

“Ter was fucking _tiny_ as a first-year,” he says, because though Terence is still small—classic seeker’s build—he looked about eight when he started at Hogwarts. 

“They put him in the girls’ dorm, at first. I dunno who does that, the castle or the headmaster or the deputy head or the fuckin’ house elves, but Ter was tiny and terrified and thought he was gonna have to spend seven years going stealth.”

Oliver winces beside him; Marcus feels how his shoulder twitches. Ollie and Ter aren’t exactly close, but they’re as friendly as they can be given Ter fled to the continent three years ago and just came back in the past few months. And Terence and Marcus, well, they’ve spent a whole friendship offending each other and patching it up. Fuck, Terence is the reason Marcus knew he liked boys—not that he wants to fucking talk about that, ever, but. There it is. Terence means a lot, and Oliver knows it.

“So this little kid, he looks like he’s about to fuckin’ bawl at any moment, but he stomps up to the professor in the common room that first night—”

“Snape was in your common room on the first night?” Oliver asks, bewildered.

“Every fucking week, Ols,” because he was, Professor Snape _always_ made time for his house, “And so Ter marches up when Professor Snape’s about to head out and he’s mad and scared and he _demands_ that the professor answer for this, but he’s also kind of whispering because if he does have to dorm with the girls he doesn’t want them to _know_ , right? And the professor, he just looks at Ter in that way he does, you know, like you’re a specimen on his table. I thought for sure Ter was done for, but Professor Snape, he just says, ‘That’s an unacceptable mistake, Mr. Higgs.’ Like he—he doesn’t even blink, doesn’t demand some explanation, he just got the fucking picture and fixed it.”

Marcus half wants to laugh, because remembering Terence at that age is ridiculous, but he half wants—well, wants to do something else, too. He feels like Ter did, that night, mad and scared and about ready to break. He feels the tension vibrating under his skin, and he _can’t stop talking_.

“He was just like that with every one of us. He’d rip your head off when you fucked up, but—but he was the only professor who could tell a fuck up from everything else. In… in my OWL year, I was failing everything.” Oliver knows this; they’ve talked about it before, on those nights when Marcus still feels like his academic failures measure his worth. He’s got new failures to replace those worries, now. “And he pulled me into his office and I was bloody scared because just earlier that week McGonagall had reamed me out for yet _another_ shitty pincushion and Flitwick’d called my last three essays abysmal and I just—I expected something like that, yeah? But he told me to pick three classes I could see myself in for NEWTs, right, so I did. I named ‘em. And he told me: pass those. Fail the rest of your OWLs. I thought I had gone mad. Some fever dream from too much failing or somethin’, but he was real, and he said it was, it was just about _priorities_ and if I could manage three classes, it was enough to stay enrolled, and that it was okay for that to be enough for me.”

Marcus sighed, looking at the pillar. The name Severus Snape was just barely visible where it was carved into the black stone; they could’ve given him a brass inlay, at least. Just something to make it clear to all these fuckers that a fucking Slytherin, an unlikeable, mean piece of shit, was one of their fucking heros. 

“Never been told that before. Father—” and _fuck_ does he hate mentioning his father, especially now, “—would’ve sooner disowned me than say that. The professor, though, he thought it was enough to do what I could. _I_ was enough.” His voice is cracking and Oliver’s wrapping his arms around Marcus and he hopes that the sparse crowd behind them has grown even sparser, but he won’t turn to check. It’s bad enough to be a former Slytherin at the war memorial; he doesn’t need to see their judgment for mourning the lone Slytherin, too.

“When I came back for my do-over year,” Marcus whispers, because he can control his voice better if he whispers, “I thought that would be it. He’d strip my captaincy, maybe kick me off the team, treat me like the embarrassment I was.” Oliver tries to reassure him, he knows. He can hear the soothing noises his boyfriend makes as he rubs Marcus’ back, and it’s nice, appreciated, but he _was_ an embarrassment. “He said I had to go to class and he set my team on me like I was a lost first-year, but he made sure I went to class even if I was behind and he was right. It helped. I passed. I was prepared to fail them all again and just fucking give up, yeah? Rot away on family money—until that mad bastard came back in another year, I guess, and I would’ve been one of the first new conscripts—but he made me go to class and because I was in class I listened and took notes and learned enough to pass and I _found you_ and I got onto the _Magpies_ and _I’m not fucking marked_ —”

He’s crying. If he wasn’t embarrassingly out-of-place before, he is now: the hulking brute of a Slytherin, a professional quidditch player of some note, from a family of some infamy, with fat tears sliding down his face in front of _fucking_ Professor Snape’s grave. The bastard would have hated this, for sure.

Oliver only holds him more tightly, pulling Marcus’ face down to his neck to shield him from it all. Ollie’s a _war hero_ , one of the living ones with his name in the papers and the books and everything, and he’s too fucking good to stand here with Marcus as he cries over Severus bloody Snape.

Except it’s not just Snape, not really. It’s all of them, Marcus and Terence and Pansy and Bole and Bletchley and the Montagues and Nott and every Slytherin who can’t be here today because they’re not welcome or imprisoned or fucking dead, and Professor Snape should have had all of them, not just Marcus Flint, to remember him for how he _lived_ , not just how he died.

So he lets himself cry onto Oliver’s neck until his tears go dry and his body stops shaking, until he feels the eyes of the straggling mourners slide away from his spectacle, until he’s ready to say goodbye to the professor.

Because he’s not coming back. This memorial isn’t for him. But the professor should get that courtesy at least once in his death, he thinks, and even if Marcus Flint isn’t his best or his brightest, he can be here when they cannot.

Marcus steps away from Ollie when he’s ready to leave. A soft tug on Oliver’s hand is enough for him to know Marcus is done; words frequently fail them, but their bodies rarely do. Oliver lets him break the embrace and they stand there, facing the pillar, for a final moment.

“Think he’d like flowers?” Oliver asks, because what else is there to do?

“He’d hate them,” Marcus says. “But everyone else here would hate it more, the professor getting flowers, and he’d enjoy that.”

They cover the plinth in flowers. There’s more flowers than at any other marker, even Dumbledore’s tomb; roses and peonies and chrysanthemums and violets and begonias and lavenders and no _fucking_ lilies, the man deserves that dignity, spill all over the lonely, dark grave.

It’s fitting for a Slytherin, using your tomb as a final “fuck you,” Marcus thinks. Severus Snape wasn’t the best of them, but he knew that, and he still put the effort in for his snakes. In his wake… they’d have to find someone else to care.

Oliver puts his arm around Marcus and begins to guide him through the remaining mourners, back toward the gates, so they can head home, and Marcus thinks that maybe he has.


End file.
